Starting in 1654,
America's coastal cities, first New Amsterdam then north
to Newport and south to New Orleans, saw the first wave
of Jewish migration — Jews arriving from Portugal and
Spain, many having first found refuge in the Caribbean
or in South America. Not founded until 1796,
Cleveland saw only two notable Sephardic
Jews in its early years:
Daniel Levi Peixotto (1800 - 1843), born in
Amsterdam, who came to Willoughby in 1835 to teach
medicine and his son
Benjamin Franklin Peixotto (1834-1890) was a
prominent figure in Cleveland Jewish life in the period
1850 - 1866.

Since that time, Cleveland
has enjoyed its share of all the subsequent waves -
large and small - of Jewish immigration to America.

These pages will try
to document these immigrations by showing an
illustrated history of the generations of a successful
family of those times.

German
Jews of the early and mid 19th century

"German-Jewish
immigration changed the face of American Jewry. ...
Between 1815 and the eve of the Civil War two million
German-speaking Europeans migrated to the United
States." So writes Professor Howard M Sachar. Economic
opportunity and greater political freedom drew
German-speakers (there was no German nation yet) to
these shores. German immigrants were the largest
non-English speaking immigrant group. A surprising 24
percent of soldiers in the Union army were first-generation
German immigrants or their sons. There were even
German-speaking companies and regiments.

Jews, particularly
these in Southern and Western Germany, suffered under
restrictions on occupation and marriage that gave them
greater motivation to leave for America. Bavaria was one
of those backward repressive areas and it was Unsleben,
in one of the more isolated areas of Bavaria, from which
many of Cleveland's first Jews came.

In 1880, the United States
was home to only three percent of the world's Jewish population
- some 500,000 Jews - nearly all
German-speaking Jews who arrived starting in the 1830's
and their children and grandchildren. Cleveland had only
3,500 Jewish citizens.

Our example is one line of
descendants of Cleveland's first permanent Jewish
settler,
Simpson Thorman.
The only Jew in Cleveland, in July 1839 he met the
Alsbacher party (ECH..)
of 19 Jews from Bavaria and convinced 15 of them to come
to Cleveland. German
was the preferred language of the new American Jews of
that time. For many years sermons, much of the prayer
book and even congregational minutes would be in German.
Discussions on issues such as what language should be
used for sermons could split a congregation.

Starting in 1880, each year tens of thousands of Yiddish
speaking Jews, many secular but most Orthodox, from
Galicia and Russia would flee persecution, poverty and
military conscription. Federal laws would cut off the
flow of newcomers in 1924, but about 2.5 million Jews
managed to come to the United States. And they stayed.
Perhaps 80 percent of American Jews are descended from
those who arrived in that wave of immigration.

Our example is the
family of Schmuel and Mindel Klausner, who came to Cleveland from
Russia in 1910. They, their nine children and their
grandchildren made their way in patterns of residence,
religious affiliation, education and work that
were very characteristic of their times.
More on the
Klausner family.

Closer to our times
are the arrival of Jews fleeing Germany
just before World War II and immediately after.

We also hope to tell
the story of remarkable transplantation of Telshe
Yeshiva from Telshe (Telz), Lithuania to Wickliffe, Ohio
in the 1940's.

Jews leaving Hungary at the
time of the uprising against Soviet domination.

The wave of Soviet Jews arriving in the 1980's.We have told, in
Dr Louis
Rosenblum's memoirs, the leadership role played by a small band
of Cleveland Jews, largely "west siders," to
improve the lot of Soviet Jews and open doors for
them to find new lives here and in Israel. We are
working to add one or two family stories of this wave of
immigration.

References

Two sources will be
frequently cited:

MT = Merging
Traditions Judah Rubinstein (d. 2003) with
Jane Avner
Published in 2004 in cooperation with The Jewish
Community Federation of Cleveland and The Western
Reserve Historical Society, it is the
essential book for an appreciation of our Jewish
History. Extensively illustrated with treasures from
Cleveland's Jewish archives, kept at WRHS.

ECH = Encyclopedia of Cleveland
History, which has many
biographies of leaders of Cleveland's Jewish
community and brief histories our leading
institutions. Where shown, ECH is an active link to
a page on their website. Click on it to read their
online entry.